>>12254640This would be true if Starship weren't shaping up to be at least almost contemporary to SLS plus maybe a year or two absolute maximum (so SLS may launch maybe once and very improbably twice before Starships start flying, assuming the most pessimistic timetable for Starship development). The thing is, a stripped down expendable superheavy booster (legless and only reusing the thrust structure via down range splashdown) and an expendable or pseudo-expendable legless, near-wingless Starship, SS-Superheavy could significantly exceed SLS1-B's 105-ish tons, in fact if I'm not mistaken speculation on the uprating potential of Starship puts it's (very) theoretical maximum payload in reusable mode at 150 tons, which exceeds even the theoretical payload capacity of SLS block 2, a rocket which at present seems unlikely to ever be developed or deployed.
On top of that, while Elon says that Starship would "hopefully never" be fired in expendable mode, in that regime it's theoretical maximum payload rests somewhere between 250-300mT, or substantially more than double SLS1-B or SLS-B2's maximum theoretical payload capacities.
On top of that, even fully expended Starship+Superheavy would likely not exceed a fourth of SLS's cost, while it's manufacturing cycle means that in single year even fully expendable Starships could probably put up to two kilotons of payload into LEO.
Frankly, in any scenario in which Starship+Superheavy is successful, SLS is made completely obsolescent.
